The Dream Dance of a lifetime

The Dancer from Marvel

A few weeks later. One Thursday afternoon I was coming home from tutoring classes, and when mum opened the door, she had a surprise for me.
" Sabrina, I have to tell you something.. You have been excepted in the National Chinese Ballet Academy."
Mum announced
" Really?! Oh My Gosh!! I got in!!"
I squealed with laughter.
" Ashley, Ashley you've got to know this, I got excepted in the National Chinese Ballet school!"

Ashley ran over and said to me
" OMG!! You really did, you are such an amazing dancer, I had a feeling that you would be accepted."
" Thank you sooo much Ash!"
I replied
When I heard that it was a Ballet school in Shanghai, I would have to leave my family in Hong Kong and move to Shanghai. I couldn't believe that I was going to leave my second home to go off and become a dancer in Shanghai.

" Sabrina, you're going to leave us after next week. You'll be travelling to Shanghai with all of the other students who have been accepted into the prestigious ballet academy."
Said Mum.
Then I felt a dust of anxiety when it came to that.

" I'm going to miss all of you in this family,"
I said to my parents.
After that we all went into a family group hug.

Time Skip... Two weeks later, Shanghai China
We arrived at the most opulent and fanciest buildings in China.
" This is the dance school. The place where all of you will become professional dancers."
Introduced our board manager Yung Chan
" Now, you will go inside the dance school, into your rooms with the key one of your group members has, and you will get dressed into your dance clothes get everything ready and start our first rehearsal."
Explained Diao Wu the assistant manager and school coordinator.
When we walked inside, I thought that was crazy to start our first rehearsal after we were on a plane and the long day we had.

They weren't going to give us any breaks, we were tirelessly doing 10 hours a day ballet rehearsals and we would not have dinner if someone makes a mistake, then for another ten hours the next day, do more rehearsals and only if we're perfect with rehearsals, we would have dinner. We weren't allowed to eat anything until dinner and sometimes, no food at all and worst of all no water for us until rehearsals are over.

This is a pretty hardcore dance school that has no breaks, meals or water. Some nights we don't even go to sleep because we keep dancing and dancing until we get it right. And yep that's reality in this dance school. I don't like being en pointe for ten hours without breaks. Our typical day is Dance for ten hours, Have dinner if we're perfect with rehearsals and then only go to sleep for two hours. Only the principal dancers get to sleep for four hours a day.

It's just so harsh to be studying ballet at this dance school. I thought it was going to be like my old dance schools, but it turns out that this intensive training is the best opportunity for dancers. I miss all of my family and my lovely mum spent heaps and heaps of money on my dance training fees, supplies, costumes let alone pointe shoes. These dancers in the Academy have been doing ballet since they were 3 years old and I started at age 6. I was probably the only one who started ballet at a late age compared to most of my friends back in Australia started when they were 8.

I can say that ballet isn't easy, you're working so hard on getting the steps perfect and beautiful without messing up or something else worse than that. I have to at least get the steps perfect or else Yung Chan is going to think I'm a useless and foolish girl. When one of the students messed up in rehearsals, we starved until the next day because if someone still continues to mess up than everyone is not having dinner the next day.

I could die of thirst and hunger if we keep dancing without food and water. All we do is dance for a long time and it's painful being on pointe for almost 8 hours straight. Dance is what I enjoy, but not in this way. I think this dance school is too harsh and it needs to have less strict rules like messing up could lead to no food or water at all.

All I could do was just dance to get that thought out of me.